


hands which have made and fashioned me

by weatheredlaw



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley Was Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Implied Sexual Content, M/M, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-24 22:44:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20022247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weatheredlaw/pseuds/weatheredlaw
Summary: “Whatever you were called, I don’t care. So long as I can still call you mine, then that’s all that matters.”or: god comes to the garden





	hands which have made and fashioned me

Crowley had said he thought the big one was still coming. Heaven and hell against all of humanity — and the two of them, of course. Wouldn’t be a fight with upstairs and down below if they didn’t get involved. But years after the apocalypse-that-wasn’t passed, and still — nothing. Crowley talked Aziraphale into moving out of the city, but it wasn’t really a stretch. Nothing as torturous as convincing Aziraphale to leave some of his books behind, just until Crowley could make him a library that was bigger on the inside.

They settle, but when you settle for the person you _love_ , it’s not really settling, is it? They get a lovely cottage in the South Downs, where you can walk to the beach. They get something with a big, beautiful yard, where Crowley can grow fruit trees and anything else he wants. Eventually, Crowley makes the library bigger on the inside. Eventually, they stop talking about what they’ll do when heaven or hell turns up on their doorstep.

Eventually, they stop planning for angels.

* * *

“How many days?”

“Just a few,” Aziraphale murmurs, trailing his hand down Crowley’s bare back. He presses a kiss between his shoulder blades. “You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

“I will,” Crowley says. “I’ll notice every day. Make a big stink about it, until Mrs. Patrakis starts to shout at me.”

“She’d never.”

“Oh,” Crowley says, rolling onto his side. “She would.” He pulls Aziraphale into his arms, buries his face in his chest. “Three entire days, angel? What if the house burns down, hm? What if the tide rolls in and _washes_ me away? What if I discorporate myself pulling something out of the disposal? What if—”

Aziraphale kisses him quiet. “You know I’ll stay if you beg me.”

“And I don’t beg.” Aziraphale raises a brow. “Well, not for things like _that_. Terrible angel. _Wicked_ angel.”

“Oh don’t say that too loud,” Aziraphale says. “Might call one home.”

* * *

The begonias are misbehaving. Crowley notes this with a hiss under his breath as the leaves start to tremble. “Best not die while the angel is away,” he mutters. “He’ll be distraught if you do. Your his favorites.” Crowley doesn’t know _why_ Aziraphale prefers the begonias. They’re not as lovely as the apple blossoms, or even the leaves of the peach tree. Still, he’ll grow what Aziraphale asks for. Won the garden prize last year out of everyone in the whole village. Mr. Bailey was _ever_ so incensed.

“Now, if no one objects, it’s time for a spot of pruning—”

“Why do you talk to them?”

Crowley freezes, just inside the garden shed. Reaches for his shears. Doubtful he’ll be capable of discorporating an archangel, but...stranger things have happened.

“They don’t answer,” Gabriel says. “And you talk to them. You were strange in heaven, too.”

“Strange is one word for it,” Crowley says. He grips the shears in his hand and turns around. “What do you want, Gabriel? Aziraphale’s not here, and I think you know that.” Gabriel is reaching for an apple. “Oh, you’re not _really_ going to eat a piece of fruit from a demon’s garden are you Gabe? Bit stupid, even for you.”

Gabriel draws his hand back. “I was...admiring them. They’re beautiful.”

“Don’t talk so loud,” Crowley mutters, and brushes past him to get at the roses. “Go straight to their heads, that talk will.”

“Raphael—”

Crowley turns, brandishing the shears, putting them an inch from Gabriel’s chest. “ _Don’t_ call me that,” he snarls. “Don’t ever call me that, do you understand me?”

“You were so much. So _great_ —”

“Not _strange_ , Gabe? Not unstable and unsatisfactory and unloved? Now you want to call me _great_ and _magnificent._ Oh, I don’t need to hear it to know. Don’t need to hear you say it, what do you want? You’ve come here, the angel gone, and me. Defenseless. Nothing to protect me.”

Gabriel raises a brow. “You can protect yourself. We’re both aware of that.”

“How do you even know?” Crowley asks. “I was stolen from you. The memory of me. When I fell, my name fell with it. No other angel in heaven called that now. They’ve retired my _number._ ”

Gabriel looks up. “...The Almighty willed it so.”

Crowley looks up with him, past the sun and the clouds, shielding his eyes and squinting. He tugs off his sunglasses and points. “Oi! Leave well enough alone why don’t you?”

“Don’t _talk_ to Her like that—”

“What do you _want?_ ” Crowley throws the shears to the side and grabs Gabriel by his jacket, shoving him up against the tree. “Want me to grovel? Beg for forgiveness? Sorry your war got cancelled, sorry it was all such a _waste_ of bloody resources, but I don’t apologize to anyone for anything. Especially not you.”

Gabriel is unfazed. “She wants you to come home. She wants you to be reborn. Be one of us, again.”

Crowley’s breath comes in greatly unnecessary and uneven gasps. He blinks. “...What?”

“She said that it was time...time for you to come home. I’m a messenger. So I’m...delivering the message. Come home, Raphael. That’s what she wanted me to say to you.”

Crowley lets go. Takes a step back.

_Home._

“Yes,” Gabriel says. “ _Home._ We hung stars together, don’t you remember? You and I. Michael, too. The three of us, it was always us.” He reaches out before Crowley can move away, and takes his face in his hands. Foreheads tipped together, their shared history spills out. The garden falls away, the cottage and the apple tree. Crowley opens his eyes and they stand in the middle of inky black space, wings unbound, watching starlight blink into being all around them.

“... _Oh._ ”

“What you made was beautiful. What _we_ made was beautiful. How we ever expected to fight a war without you is insanity. It is! I mean—” Gabriel laughs, taking a step back and turning to look up at the stars. “We had so much, the three of us. And can I blame you, even now, for loving him? For falling after him?”

Crowley frowns. “I didn’t fall after him. I didn’t chase him or seek him out. He said something, I agreed. She didn’t seem to like it.”

“Too many questions,” Gabriel murmurs. “That’s what she said, when she sent me here. You asked too many questions.”

“So, what, it’s all okay now? Everything’s forgiven?”

“It was forgiven a long time ago,” Gabriel says, though the voice isn’t really his, and the words certainly aren’t.

She’s in there, he realizes. Inside him.

“...Gabriel—”

“I sent him to speak to you, and you reject him. I sent him to love you and you turn him away. I show you the galaxies you built and still you decline.”

“Stop this.”

Gabriel’s head turns to the side, brow raised, expression...unnatural. “What will it take, Raphael? What do you require—”

“Get out of his head. Get away from us both, and get _out_ —” He throws his arms wide, and the illusion fades. “ _—of my garden!_ ”

The earth stops shaking.

Gabriel leans against the apple tree. Reaches up, and takes one.

“I don’t know why. I didn’t...I didn’t ask.”

“That’s your problem.” Crowley staggers back. Feels like he should be bleeding, but he’s not. “No more questions allowed upstairs.”

“Come _home_ ,” Gabriel insists.

Crowley hisses. “Fuck off,” he says.

Gabriel disappears. The apple falls to the ground.

* * *

“ _Crowley? I’m so sorry I was an extra day, are you outside?_ ” Aziraphale steps out of the door leading from the kitchen out to the garden, where Crowley is wrist deep in the earth beneath the begonias, berating them. He looks up as Aziraphale appears, and every molecule that makes him, holy and unholy, real and not so real, _reacts._

“ _Angel._ ” He goes to him, rushes at him, cups his face in his hands, smearing rich dark earth across Aziraphale’s cheeks. Aziraphale kisses him, gripping Crowley’s arms and hauling him close.

“Goodness,” he says. “Oh, _goodness_.” Crowley kisses down the length of his neck, nipping at his pulsepoint. “Darling, it was only a few days—”

“Just—” Crowley draws back, swiping a dirty thumb over Aziraphale’s brow. _Look at you_ , he thinks. _He was here and you don’t even know._

“Crowley, are you alright?”

Crowley pulls him close, kisses between his brows. “Yes,” he murmurs. “Yes, I’m fine.”

Aziraphale laughs. “You’ve smudged me. What are you doing out here, frightening to flowers to death?” He moves to check on them, but Crowley snags his hand. Aziraphale looks at him, raising a brow. “You’re filthy, I’m not taking you to bed while you’re covered in all _that._ ”

Crowley snaps his fingers. “Better?”

“Mmhm.” Aziraphale moves into his embrace. “Oh, yes. Yes,” he says, reaching up and tracing Crowley’s bottom lip with his finger. “Much better.”

And after, spent and warm and _in love_ — Crowley reaches out, carding his fingers through Aziraphale’s hair.

“Something’s bothering you,” Aziraphale murmurs. “Something I can’t place.” He frowns, tucking his arm under his head and facing Crowley. “Did something happen?”

“You were gone for three days, angel.”

“Four.”

“Fine. _Four_ days.” Crowley stretches. “Nothing happened. I missed you, is all.”

Aziraphale raises a brow. “Really?”

“What, I can’t _miss_ you?”

“Well. We _used_ to go several decades without seeing one another. Sometimes a few centuries. And now just a few days—”

“It’s different,” Crowley says. “It’s different now, and you know it.”

Aziraphale seems taken aback, but he eventually nods, pulls Crowley to him, and they do it all again.

* * *

It’s late when the garden gate swings open. Aziraphale rarely sleeps, but sometimes, after they’ve gone again and again, after he’s been fed and Crowley has kissed him until his lips are apple-skin red and the world outside is dark and still — he will sleep.

Crowley is always ready to sleep, but tonight he’s on edge, and the garden gate shouldn’t swing. It shouldn’t open for anyone at all except himself and Aziraphale. No door in this house opens for anyone but them —

Crowley is rarely afraid. He is afraid tonight.

He pulls on pants and a shirt, making his way downstairs and into the kitchen. The moon is painfully bright, illuminating the flowers. They look perfect like this, and he wonders, only for a second, if he’s being too hard on them.

He steps out and eyes the garden gate, swinging open and shut, open and shut. Goes to close it.

“Who opened you?” he murmurs. “Who’s here?”

Behind him, he senses bare feet stepping on the grass, dark curls that sweep over flawless skin. Teeth, sharp enough to pierce the skin of an apple, and unravel the whole of humanity’s future before her.

“Hello, Raphael.”

He turns. She does _look_ a great deal like Eve. She was gorgeous then, she is gorgeous now. Crowley had thought her too beautiful to tempt, like she belonged in the garden. Couldn’t she have? Couldn’t she have just stayed? Wouldn’t the world have…

No. Terrible way to think of it. She didn’t do anything wrong. She only...she only asked questions.

She only ever asked questions.

But this isn’t Eve. It was never going to be Eve. Eve died, Crowley was there when they lit her pyre. Never let her too far out of his sight.

“Don’t,” he says. “Not with her voice. Not like that.”

“You spurned my messenger. Gabriel was very disappointed in himself.” An apple hangs close, and so God reaches up with one perfect hand, and plucks it from the branch. Takes a bite. “Is this how you punish yourself?”

“Leave me alone. You punished me enough, just _leave me_ alone.”

“My love. My dear. My _darling_ Raphael—”

“I said don’t.”

God holds out a hand and beckons. Crowley goes. Kneels at her feet.

He was never going to be able to resist for very long.

She cups his cheek. “You could come home. You proved yourself, it’s been six thousand years.”

“More than that.”

“Six thousand here on earth, teaching and tempting. Don’t tell me you’ve been as wicked as they say.” She strokes his cheek. “I know you _better_ than that.”

“Been a terrible demon,” he murmurs, leaning into her touch. How can he resist? How can he deny her this? She made him, She loved him, She gave him the universe. _Here_ , She’d said. _Do what you’d like._ And Crowley...Crowley had been something else then. He’d been another creature entirely.

He’d been _Her’s._

“You have,” She says, and leans in to kiss his forehead. It _burns._

“What do you want from me?” he asks. “The angel prays to you all the time and you don’t answer, but you come into my garden, you take...take her _face_ —” A face he loved, a face he adored, a face he looked after and burned to protect. “What do you _want_ from me?” he asks.

She cradles his face in her hands. “For you to _come home_ , angel. Come home.”

Crowley looks at Her, mouth open in prayers unsaid. He _longs_ for Her, of course he does. Why shouldn’t he?

“All the stars in the sky,” She murmurs. “And your wings, your beautiful wings…” She reaches into the plane where they exist and strokes them, carefully. “Did it hurt?”

 _Yes_ , he wants to say. _Yes, it hurt and it still hurts and it hurts every day and he’s been my only balm._

“Not anymore.”

“Liar. Good at lying, demons are.”

“Job description,” he whispers.

“Come home,” She says. “Come home, come home, come _home._ You saved the world, and I want to reward you, I want to make you good again. I—”

Crowley senses him before he hears him. Wrenches himself from Her grasp and throws himself at the ground to look up and see Aziraphale stepping out into the garden.

“...Crowley.”

“ _Aziraphale_.”

She stands. “Is this why? Is this the reason you won’t leave?”

 _A reason?_ he wants to scream. _You call him a reason?_

“Why?” Aziraphale asks. “Why are you here?”

“To call home my son.”

“I’m not your _son_ ,” Crowley snarls, pulling himself up to his knees. “You cast me out! You threw me away! You stole my stars and my name and now you want me home?”

“Heaven _needs_ you.’

“Then go get him. Go get your _shining_ star. Bring _him_ home—”

“Wretched excuse for a demon,” She says. “Too much goodness in you.”

“Yeah.” Crowley forces himself onto his feet. “But never good enough for you.”

She looks between them. “Is this your choice, then? To remain here, to crawl on your belly for the rest of days?”

“I don’t crawl,” Crowley says. “That _isn’t_ my name anymore. I changed it. And I chose something else.” He looks at Aziraphale, trembling, beautiful Aziraphale, and smiles. “I chose him.”

* * *

When God leaves, she sets the apple tree on fire. Probably not on purpose. She probably can’t help it. Aziraphale stands next to Crowley and they watch it burn for a minute, before Aziraphale snaps his fingers and it goes back to the way it was. Mostly.

“A _lemon_ tree? Lemons don’t grow in England, angel.”

“This one does. And I’m done with symbolism. Far too heavy handed.” He moves angrily around the kitchen, smashing about. Breaks three tea cups before Crowley takes the task from him and puts him on the couch. “What _happened_ Crowley?”

“God came to visit.”

“She wanted you back. Why did she want you back?”

“S’not important.”

“It must have been.” Aziraphale watches him. Crowley leans heavily against the counter. “Who were you, before?”

“Nobody.”

Aziraphale shakes his head, stands again and comes up behind Crowley in the kitchen. “Tell me,” he says. “Tell me who—”

Crowley turns and kisses him, hard. Scrabbling and tearing, they collide right there, rutting against one another. Crowley takes and takes and takes, swallowing Aziraphale up, tugging on his lip and crying out when Aziraphale’s hand claws his side. “ _Angel_ —”

“Be with me. Be with me and tell me.”

“I can’t. _I can’t._ ”

Crowley abandons the tea. In the living room they fall into one another, Crowley bent over the sofa while Aziraphale moves inside him, pressed against his back while he says, “If you can’t I don’t care. If you had other names, I don’t need them. But you aren’t leaving me. You aren’t going back.”

“I’d never. You know I’d never.”

“Because this is ours, this belongs to us and I love Her, but She can’t have it.” Aziraphale slows down, pressing his lips to Crowley’s neck and reaching for his hand. Makes _love_ to him. “She can’t have you.”

* * *

“You should have told me about Gabriel.”

Crowley nods. “Probably.”

“ _Really_ Crowley. We’re married, we’re supposed to say these things to one another.”

“Oh, husband of mine—” Crowley reaches out, draws his knuckles down Aziraphale’s back. “Forgive me.”

“I suppose.”

Crowley grins. “ _Cheek_ ,” he says, and kisses him. “How’re we going to explain a lemon tree to the neighbors?”

“Soil balance, or something. I don’t know, you’re the liar.”

“Indeed I am.” Crowley sighs. “You know, I don’t think She’ll be back.”

“She could.” Aziraphale looks at him. “...Would your answer change?”

“Nope.”

“You’re quite sure? Because if you were as important as I _think_ you were—”

Crowley crowds his space, silencing him. “I was never as important as I was when I stood with you. And I will never _be_ as important as I am right now. Do you understand me?”

Aziraphale stares for a moment, then presses a tender, _aching_ kiss to Crowley’s lips.

“Of course,” he murmurs. “Yes, of course.” They do that for a while, kiss and kiss until Crowley is certain days may have passed. Eventually, Aziraphale draws back. “Whatever you were called, I don’t care. So long as I can still call you mine, then that’s all that matters.”

Crowley smiles. “Well, lucky for you, I don’t want to be called anything else.”

“Good.” Aziraphale pulls him in, kissing him again. “I’m so very glad to hear that.”

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @ weatheredlaw


End file.
